View Single Comment

Trails In The Sky: Finally got around to this game whose title I will never be abbreviating. Being a Falcom game, it allows players to pick 'Nightmare' Difficulty right off the bat with a rather interesting screen before confirming the choice: "It's your funeral."

Compared to Mushihimesama's "Are you prepared to battle sheer despair?", I found that attempt at a warning to be rather quaint.

Though neither of them are quite as intimidating as what I initially read the latter as: "Are you prepared to battle sheep despair?"

Now that one gave me pause.

No regrets about the choice, btw. The battle system is decent as far as turn-based strategy goes, and if enemies were any less vicious, then I suspect I would not have had to learn how to take advantage of a lot of its dimensions. Grinding also seems to be fairly useless on this mode, as most enemies seem to KO my party members in an average of two-to-three hits regardless of level, which is a huge plus. Equipment seems more important, and the sidequests themselves are well-balanced in terms of seeming to know at every point how many party members the player should have, what items they should possess, the strength and elements of spells they should know.

My main complaint is that there are *soooo* many sidequests that I feel like I might need to take a break and play something else, and I am only on Chapter 2. And this with Xenoblade on the horizon -- talk about time-sinks.

As a secondary complaint, everything about the story that is not directly related to the two main characters (plus one side character) is kind of awful. The plot consists of mostly standard stock JRPG nonsense of mostly predictable beats so far and a lot of what look like upcoming obvious twists.

So there is a mole in the military: Am I supposed to think that it is the gruff and stubborn old general who irrationally hates my party members and opposes me at every turn? Because the reasonable, friendly young colonel who always acts super-appreciative and helpful toward my party is the one who is setting off all kinds of warning bells right now.